iPage eCommerce Tools

What is eCommerce?

eCommerce simply refers to the business of buying and selling products over the internet. This is usually done by setting up an eCommerce website where users can browse and purchase your products or avail of your services. Like a business venture in real life, it takes capital and good marketing to achieve a successful eCommerce website. To attract customers and build their confidence, you need to sign up with a reliable web hosting provider that is able to deliver all the services necessary to run a business online. There are lots of eCommerce tools that you can use nowadays. Here, let us see what iPage can do with your eCommerce needs.

What is iPage?

A veteran web hosting provider, iPage has been delivering quality web hosting service since 1998 and has already helped in putting up millions of websites. You can find it on most web hosting review sites with high ratings and usually taking the top spot of the list of best web hosts.

iPage’s eCommerce Tools

iPage offers a wide array of eCommerce tools you can choose from. Some of them are free and are included in the iPage Essential Hosting plan, while others need to be purchased as add-on services.

Shopping Cart – Shopping carts are applications which when installed on your website will allow you to include “Add to Cart” options to your products. You’ve probably seen one if you tried to purchase a product online. The site will display a catalog with all your products arranged with images and pricing details. Below them is the “Add to Cart” checkbox which when checked will add the product to the user’s list of shopped items. Once done, all the user needs to do is check out and pay the corresponding total price.

Credit Card Processing – Credit card payment is the most commonly recognized method of online payment (PayPal is second) since you cannot engage in online transactions and pay them with paper bills. Though possible, it is obviously inconvenient since eCommerce is intended to be a fast alternative to conventional shopping. Hence, if you want to start an online store, you will also need a system for processing credit card payments. iPage lets you do this by forging partnerships with two recognized merchant solutions provider: PayPal and AcceptSafe.

SSL Certificates – SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and is a form of protocol designed to provide security to websites through encryption and other security measures. Through this, websites can exchange sensitive information like credit card information without fear of security breach or theft of information. A site with SSL certificate can be recognized through the green padlock which appears on the web address, and the https:// prefix on the site’s domain name. iPage provides a shared SSL certificate to all users and also offers a premium SSL certificate in exchange for an additional fee.

SEO Services and Directory Listing – Strictly speaking, these services are not eCommerce tools. However, they can help boost your online presence and increase your site’s traffic. This will translate into higher profits for your online venture. iPage offers professional SEO services for your website. They have a team of highly-trained SEO copyrighters who will take care of your site’s contents and ensure that they are SEO-friendly. They will also take care of acquiring backlinks for your site to get higher SEO ranking. Directory listing on the other hand allows your site to be featured on iPage’s community directory which already has a high SEO ranking. There, users can browse through iPage-hosted websites and see a description or short summary of their websites. To use these two essential services, you need to purchase them through iPage’s official site.